We woke to the green glow of the rain forest outside the cottage windows.
And after a decadent shower with tropical air blowing in the windows, we wandered around the grounds of Volcano Garden Arts.
It was a foggy, cloudy day. Wisps blew thru the treetops. We had a simple breakfast of bananas, bread and cereal, and then we drove the mile up the road for the first of what would turn out to be many visits to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.
There were steam vents beside the road with white steam rising out of fern-lined holes in the ground. The mist and the fog and the steam were all around us. The forests stood silently in the distant haze. The grasses waved in the humid air. Behind a stand of green trees across a field, large clouds of steam billowed out of the ground and were carried away by the breeze.
At the caldera’s edge, we gazed out beyond the grasses and ferns and trees obliviously growing at the brink of destruction. In the distance thru the haze and clouds and blowing mist, steam rose from beyond the edge of the inner crater.
Halema‘uma‘u. Pele’s home.